Editing Backlit Images With Photoshop Actions

One of my favorite ways to shoot portraits is backlit. I’ve found that with MCP’s Photoshop actions it makes it easy to enhance photos by giving it that bright, sunny, glowing effect. This is my blueprint on how to add nice warm, soft lighting to my backlit images using MCP’s actions.

Before:

Ran the “Eye Doctor” action to enhance catchlights, brighten the iris, brighten the whites of the eye and used “Sharp as a Tack” to sharpen all to taste.

Ran “Magic Marker” – also from the “Fusion” set and painted it on the background only at 55% opacity.

Ran “Color Fusion Mix and Match” under the “MCP Fusion” set and left “One Click Color” at its default while making the following adjustments: turned off “Seek It” because I thought the image was bright enough, took “Protect It” down to 17% opacity to tone down some of the highlights, left “Crispy It” at default, but masked 50% off of his face and 100% off of his lips, set “Brighten It” to 35%, took “Color It” down to 20% since I already used “Magic Marker,” Turned “Dim It” off to keep it bright, brought “Rich It” down to 20% opacity keep the yellows toned down, increased “Spot It” to 30% opacity, but masked it off his hair, turned “Edge It” off, and mixed in “Sentimental” at 50% opacity on the background only. This may seem like a lot of adjusting but it took just seconds.

Ran MCP’s free Photoshop action “Touch of Light” to put some highlights in his hair at 17% opacity and used “Touch of Dark” at 40% opacity to darken parts of the field in the background and parts of his jacket.

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This post was written by a MCP Guest Blogger. If you would like to write a photo editing tutorial, blueprint using MCP Products, or photography tips on the MCP Actions Blog, check out our Guest Writers Wanted page for details.

Thanks so much for this. Could you please, for theremedial PSers like myself, explain how you do this step: “but masked 50% off of his face and 100% off of his lips”. I am not sure I understand how to do this.

Write for MCP!
This post was written by a MCP Guest Blogger. If you would like to write a photo editing tutorial, blueprint using MCP Products, or photography tips on the MCP Actions Blog, check out our Guest Writers Wanted page for details.